Rabbit Hole REWRITTEN
by Toriga-Okami
Summary: The Game - you live, you win. You die, you lose. It's as simple as that. But when Seifer Almasy is put into the Game, will he be able to survive? Can he tell the difference between his fantasy and his reality? Or will he fall deeper into the Rabbit Hole? I will be conducting a rewrite of this shamble of nonsense.
1. Prologue

"Almasy, you're up for this Game."

Seifer blinked, tearing his eyes away from his dog-eared copy of Alice in Wonderland – the standard, prison-issued version of entertainment – and stared at the guard with a look of horror. "But there are already 8 Players," he growled, watching as the guard sought through a set of identical keys for the one to his cell, "There's no room for me."

"Wrong," the guard said as he fit a key onto the hole and turned it, the lock opening with a click, "McCormick died last night of his injuries. Meaning, you play in his place."

Seifer shook his head and turned his eyes back to the book as Alice fell down the rabbit hole.

The Game was the D-District's version of entertainment. 8 prisoners, usually on death row or just particularly famous – Like Seifer for example – were put into the sort of life or death situations one would only expect to find in some crumby two-bit horror film with bad acting and way too much gore to be realistic. The idea was to get through the Game alive and in one piece, but the 'designers' had put a slight twist on the thing and that came in the form of monsters, knives, rotating machineguns and in the last stage, a laser chamber. Of course there were other 'hazards' in there as well, such as boiling acid, trapdoors and the fact that the entire thing was a maze deep underground with no hint of sunlight, but in most prisoners minds, that was simply expected. What was _really_ insulting was the fact that there were cameras hidden all over the Stages and high members of society could pay to visit the prison and watch as the Players were ripped to shreds alive. If you survived the entire thing, you were granted bale. But no one had ever reached the final tier, so no one even knew if that promise of freedom was genuine or not. But it was incentive enough to Play the Game.

"Come on, Almasy." The guard said, tugging the book from his white knuckled fingers and placing it gently on the bed beside him, "It's still going to be there when you get back, don't worry. Now come on, the director is waiting."

Sighing in resignation, Seifer stood up and stretched. The thing about the Game, the reason why so many prisoners wound up Playing the Game, was it was a challenge. It was the most exercise and rush of adrenaline one was able to get in the prison and it was a challenge to see which one of the mob was the best, who could get the farthest and survive the longest. It was a sick and exciting challenge and the prisoners just couldn't help themselves, like a moth to a flame.

Seifer allowed himself to be handcuffed and lead from his cell, passed the other prisoners in their cells and through the door at the end of his block. There was never any jeering about the game, cat-calling or well-wishing, there was nothing glorious or funny about death and for every Player so far to have entered the Game, that was all that was waiting on the other side of the door. Seifer left his cell to a deathly silence.


	2. Chapter 0point5

**System running:** HalucenEx.

**Programme:** Wonderland.

**Users:** 8.

**Errors:** 0.

**Administrator Username:** HeimlichAaDD

**Current User:** 97AlmasyS

**Condition:** Stable. Traces of MicroSync syndrome present. Levels are non-lethal.

**Denotation:** MicroSync syndrome (n) – Only experienced when the consciousness is electronically linked to the HalucenEx operating system. Fragments of the consciousness become trapped in the system, to only be accessible when the mind is connected to the system. When too much of the mind becomes trapped in the system, the consciousness will leave the body behind. The only form of sustained existence can then be found in the HalucenEx operating system. The body is just an empty shell.

HalucenEx – an operating system first created by Odine Enterprises in order to aid the Estharian Army in training exercises. The system can be programmed to run any simulation, which is then projected into the brain of any living being. Over-usage can lead to MicroSync syndrome.

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><p><em><strong>AN:**_ The first stage of re-writing Rabbithole: Reshuffle and addition of important bits of imformation. I had this written but was safing it until later on, only to then discover than what I'd previously written made no sense, so I'm having to introdue it here, now. Pay attention to all that up there as it will be extremely useful later on :S (Should 'later on' ever arrive that is...)

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><p><strong><em><span>AN:_** This is a little short and hasn't really dipped into any action yet, but I would like to say that I am getting there and although this seems a little short for how long it has taken me to write, I am currently working on a proper 1st chapter and this is more of a half chapter than anything else.

The threat of missing limbs has cajoled me into writing something to placate the millions (two), and while I would really love to be able to say the next part will be coming up soon, I cannot. Sadly, it might be a little while until the next chapter as I am C-R-A-P at writing action.

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><p>"Quistis, what're you doing?" Xu grumbled one hand on the door frame, the other scrubbing at her eyes. It was late and she was very tired and, up until a few moments ago, had been sleeping next door with her covers pulled up over her head and her pillow stuffed in her ears. But eventually, the sound of tapping and shuffling had become too much for her to handle and she'd clambered out of bed to find out what the hell was going on.<p>

There was Quistis, still dressed in the Garden uniform with her hair clipped back and her glasses perched halfway down her nose. She was sat in front of her computer and was surrounded by dozens of dusty, heavy-looking old tomes. Working again.

"It's so late," Xu continued, wandering over and squinting at the name of one of the books – Powers of Possession – "Can't this wait until morning?"

"No." Quistis said, flipped a few pages in another book and making a note of it on her computer. "It's important."

"Surely it's not all that-"

"It is."

Xu scowled at the back of Quistis' head and picked up Powers of Possession. "What are you doing?"

"Research."

"Not that fucking important then."

With a huff, Quistis stood up and turned round, snatching the book from Xu's hands. She brandished it under her friend's nose. "Possession should relieve a body of all responses, therefore making it irresponsible for anything accomplished by said body in the time of possession. Such quittance of guilt should also be carried over to the court and taken into consideration when passing judgement. I believe Seifer Almasy was under the possession of the Sorceress in the time of the wars and therefore-" She held up a hand when Xu's expression darkened and she made to interrupt. "_Therefore_, he has been done an injustice and should not be in prison at all!"

"Almasy is not important, Quistis!" Xu said, throwing her hands up in the air and raising her eyes to the ceiling. "He is a murdering, thieving turncoat who deserves nothing less than to rot in that cell for eternity! He doesn't need your sympathy or your compassion!"

"Xu, he was _possessed_!"

"No!" Xu swatted the book from Quistis' fingers, her voice raising an octave in her exasperation. "We've been over this a billion times! He was _evil_. Not possessed, evil! He found a common negativity within Ultimecia and used that power to wreak havoc on the planet. He tried to destroy it! He said he did, Q!"

Quistis was shaking her head. This was an argument the two friends had been having since the day of Seifer's conviction. Xu thought him entirely guilty. Quistis thought him entirely innocent. Xu's sleeping patterns had been deeply interrupted by Quistis' insistence on late night research sessions and she had just about had enough of it.

"Go back to sleep Xu," Quistis said, bending to retrieve her book, "You'll feel better in the morning."

"I'm not the one cracked in the head." Xu muttered darkly, watching as Quistis returned to her seat and began foraging through her books again. The argument over, for now, Xu trudged back to her bed, leaving Quistis to work on in piece.

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><p><em><strong>AN:**_ Ahem hem, and on that bombshell (I've been watching faaar too much top gear), Goodnight!

-Okami

P.S. R&R, all flames and critiques are welcomed ;)


	3. Chapter 1!

_**A/N:**_ I hope this will fill in some questions everyone must be having about this...

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><p>The smell from the silicon was one of stale sweat, urine and excrement. The plastic was stained brown around the head-mold with old blood - too long there to be scrubbed off- and was stained dark yellow, brown and deep red around the hip-mold where various previous Players' bodies had been unable to keep control of themselves in their dying hours, moments, seconds... The original colour of the silicon had been pastel green when it was new. It had a sterile look about it then that simply did not exist anymore. The people who worked in this place were as horrified as the people who Played in this place. It was a bizarre cross between medical cleanliness and torture chamber-esk gore. It hardly attracted visitors.<p>

The room itself was circular, with dozens of little screens – currently grey and blank – dotted around the walls, interspersed by dials and buttons and little flashing lights and the constant drone of pulse monitors. In the centre of the room sat 8 coffin-like things, open and filled with the silicon, man-shaped mold. The coffins were hooked up to numerous wires and lines, some of which were clear plastic IV lines and some of which looked like computer cables. At the foot of each coffin sat a small glass container – only 500ml or so – of a black liquid. The IV lines were attached to these. The computer cables were attached to the computers around the room.

Seifer looked about the room as he stood with the other 7 Players in the door way. He was beginning to feel a little groggy now. In the previous room they had all been given a small plastic cup of the same black liquid that sat in the glass containers. The other players all took it without much of a problem. They grimaced and shook their heads at the metallic taste it left on the tongue, but none of them refused to drink it. So Seifer didn't think anything of it and he took a drink too.

They were all of them still hand-cuffed and the man to Seifer's right – a short weedy looking man going bald on top and sporting a clumpy-looking ginger moustache – fell into his shoulder. He shouldered him off and then swayed dangerously to the other side. Whatever was in that liquid probably wasn't good for him, but it was a bit late to realise that. A line of scientists – or at least they looked like scientists; wearing those white coats and green surgical gloves – filed into the room and began to pull out the chairs in front of the computers. A few of them sat down and began starting up the machines, but the rest began checking the coffins and their equipment.

Comprehension was hard when he was feeling so dizzy, but Seifer was pretty damn sure he was going to be required to stuff himself into one of those coffins. He eyed the nearest one with disgust. The idea of putting his body into contact with the foul smelling thing – and all the disgusting reasons _why_ it smelt foul – was enough to make him feel queasy.

The first of the scientists came and fetched the first Player and lead him by the arm to one of the coffins, helping him into it and carefully strapping his arms and legs in. The Player appeared to be too dizzy and too used to this to resist and let the scientist do his work, uttering not a sound as the IV was fitted into his arm and the black liquid began to travel along to stream into his veins. The scientist shut the lid of the coffin as the man on Seifer's right was helped along to his own coffin.

Seifer himself wasn't dizzy enough to need any help in walking to his coffin, but he hit his head on the lid when he leant too far back. "Careful now, Son." The scientist said, putting a hand over the back of his head to shield him should he lean too far back again.

"Thanks, Grandpa." He muttered back and swung his legs up and into their molds. The scientist gave him a funny look as he tied his legs down and then pushed gently on his chest to get him to lay back. Resisting was futile – though he was loath to do as he was told any other day of the week, let alone right now – so he allowed himself to be strapped in. The IV, he discovered, hurt like fuck and gave him sudden course for worry; if he had half a mind to begin swearing his head off and attempting to tear the thing out after only his first dose of 'the black stuff', how far gone were the motherfuckers over in the next coffin taking it like it was nothing more inconvenient than cough syrup? What the hell was _in_ that liquid that drowned out the fucking senses so much you allowed yourself to be at the mercy of someone else? Stuck full of needles like a fucking pin cushion on someone else's whim? He silently made a decision not to drink any more of that stuff again if that was what it did to a person.

His indoctrination pretty much finished, the scientist began to shut the lid and Seifer was plunged into the darkness. It was a nice relief actually from the headache he had been beginning to develop on account of the spinning. But bloody hell did this smell bad... He shut his eyes and let himself go limp as he wondered what was supposed to happen next. Maybe it was a test as to how long he would be able to avoid the effects of 'the black stuff'...? Perhaps he was supposed to get himself out of this thing using only his teeth? He wrinkled his nose and dismissed the idea, it was stupid anyway. As he was lying there, a soft light began to brighten behind his eyelids. He frowned and cracked a lid open.

He found he was lying on his back still, but he was no longer in the coffin. He was lying on the floor of the room where the coffins were supposed to be and was squinting at a down-lighter in the ceiling. He sat up and looked about. The other Players were beginning to pick themselves up off the floor and were milling about, exchanging glances. They all of them looked stable now, carrying themselves upright without so much as a wobble; a far cry from the shaky looking men being helped to their coffins mere minutes ago. Seifer frowned and stood up. This was getting weirder by the second.

The Players said nothing to one another as they waited for something to happen and although Seifer wanted to ask them what would happen next, he couldn't. Part of him didn't know how to begin a conversation with a group of people he didn't know at all and who had only moments before been slobbering doddering wrecks, and the other half didn't really _want_ to know what everyone was waiting for. Luckily he wasn't forced to wait long, as the next second his world began to fade to black and another image began to appear in front of his eyes.

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><p><strong><em><span>AN:_** I know it's not much, but it sets the scene better and better explains the logistics of how an entire maze-of-death could be hidden in D-District for so long without anyone knowing about it... I didn't think of that when I started this thing...


	4. Chapter 2!

He sucked in breath, in and out, in and out, carefully regulating it as he waited for the gates in front of him to open. Despite himself, he was looking forward to this. Despite the obvious intention towards his eventual demise, he wanted to prove them wrong. He wanted to be the first one to Play the Game and survive. More than anything else, he wanted the freedom that was promised upon the completion of the Game.

He scratched an itch on his stomach and stared at the metal gates ahead of him.

The room he was in was relatively small, around the same size as his dormitory room in Garden and a little bigger than his current cell. It had a high ceiling and bare, white washed walls. Other than a camera in one corner and a small circular white light in the ceiling, there was nothing besides him in it. It was a little different from what he had been expecting - given the stories of those who survived their stages, he was expecting a metal box with rusting grates on the floor and perhaps a flickering blue light attached to a low ceiling. Perhaps there would even be a streak of blood on one of the walls, evidence of a past Player's untimely demise. But instead, aside from the polished aluminium floor, he thought it looked a little like his doctor's waiting room – minus the chairs.

He jammed his hands in his pockets and wished he had a cigarette. Waiting was what he hated the most about life threatening situations. It was boring for a start and it implied he had nothing else better to do than wait for death to find him. At least the cigarette would give him something to do with his hands.

At long last the light above the gates turned from red to green. He walked forward to take the handle of one gate and pushed it open. He came immediately into a circular room with a door on the opposite side. Seifer felt his eyebrow beginning to rise, and stopped it where it was – it would do him no good to be cocky about it; the place was designed to kill people after all. He walked into the centre of the room and looked around. The gates clicked ominously shut behind him.

The room was a lot darker than the previous one. It was a lot bigger and painted dark grey with one tiny light in the ceiling. Seifer looked around. Wasn't there supposed to be a camera around here somewhere? Maybe he could get out that way in the future. A bit of digging, a few broken nails, and voila – the other side of the divide was waiting. What was that saying? People in glass houses shouldn't toss rocks?

He looked into the corners but found nothing. No cameras, no glass houses and certainly no rocks. Shrugging in half-hearted disappointment, he strode across to the other door and pushed it wide.

* * *

><p>"With all due respect, Sir, I don't think it is impossible, or even unlikely, that Seifer was possessed by the Sorceress while fighting in the war. It is very unlike him to conduct such offenses against the authorities. His loyalties to his comrades and his friends would not have allowed him to betray-"<p>

"Ms. Trepe, might I remind you that it was Seifer who gave you such grief in your classes throughout the duration of your Instruction."

"Yes, but Sir-"

"And it was Seifer who ignored all orders on the SeeD examination, failed and nearly dragged all his fellow cadets to their deaths?"

"He did not-"

"Seifer Almasy was the same cadet who then – not days after his failed exam – went AWOL from the Garden and chased a team of trained SeeDs over the country and into the hands of the Sorceress out of mere jealousy."

"Sir! These things are all true events which happened, but not a single person was hurt on the account of Seifer Almasy up until the point of his possession. And I think you will find I was the only Instructor to ever have even the smallest shred of control over him. There would have been far more casualties on our side had he not ignored the orders which were given, and it was not jealousy which drove him to follow the team of 'newly passed' SeeDs to the place at which the Sorceress _happened to be_, but it was in fact loyalty and concern for old friends and comrades. He was a better fighter and was better trained than any of the SeeD you sent on that mission! If he had only been-"

"Do not question the people I put on my missions, Ms. Trepe, or you may find yourself falling out of favour with the higher authorities."

"Sorry sir, but while I might be out of line, you are simply wrong. Seifer Almasy was more than qualified to be a SeeD, his intelligence was best suited to the field and had you only passed him in the first place, he would not have felt the need to rush off and abandon a position you seemed bent on not letting him have, to help out friends he knew would need help. Leonhart might have been a good SeeD in the exam, but he was under experienced and such a mission would have called for-"

"He was all the client could afford. A more experienced SeeD would be more expensive."

"Then you should have just said no!"

"Don't you dare start telling me how to run my organisation, Quistis! This is a business, and as such we must cater to the clients. The mission would have gone off without a hitch had Seifer Almasy not interfered. If you would like someone to blame for the loss of your teaching post, your friends and what I am beginning to think of as your love interest, you can blame the son of a bitch himself! Now get the hell out of my office before I break the only things left keeping you standing!"

"Yes, Sir."

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><p>He swatted at a mosquito as it buzzed by his ear. God he hated these things. The room was filled with them and not much else. There were the little kind that lived by the sea, droning away the humid, sunny hours looking for fresh blood to suck, and then there were the big kind, foot ball sized and struggling around on the floor. If he hadn't been trying his best not to retain his blood pressure, he might have felt sorry for the great fat things, but as it was the huge shining eyes and slightly gelatinous body mass were making him feel sick instead.<p>

So far, there hadn't been much of a challenge presented by the Game, aside from wandering down empty corridors and into rooms of questionable contents, he hadn't found anything that could really do him any great bodily injury. It was slightly disconcerting. There was no doubt that the place was meant to be a maze and he assumed he would have to undertake a task at some point along the road, but he meant to avoid that wherever possible. Damn, he could do with a cigarette.

Another mosquito buzzed nearby and he lashed out, smearing it across the wall. He was surprised there weren't more bug splats than this, if he got the chance he wanted to crush them all. He thought back to his Garden days as he walked further into the long room. They seemed quite nice compared to this. This was confusing and tricky and he _hated_ being confused. It made him feel dumb and he hated feeling dumb. Garden had been easy to understand and easy to please. Compared to this never-ending maze of white walls and metal flooring, Garden was positively techno-coloured! And wasn't that a depressing thought.

Kicking a fat mosquito out of his way, Seifer reached the far wall. It was bare, with nothing on it, not even a door.

"Well fuck a duck." He muttered, turning round to scope the rest of the room. Other than mosquitoes, there was nothing else there but the door at the other end. "Yet another dead end."

He flapped at one of the tiny winged basterds as he stormed back to the door and wrenched it open. But it wasn't a white hallway that greeted him this time, and it certainly wasn't the white hallway he had closed the door on before.

Seifer frowned at the vegetation that hung over the door. It was a hanging vine of some sort, with big green leafs in a heart shape clinging to thin, wispy tendrils. Poison Jack. The vines themselves were not poisonous in the slightest, but the leaves were covered in an acid like compound that melted the fats in the body and allowed the plant to absorb them and grow. It was one of the many tools the Garden had used in defending itself over the years and to Seifer's experienced eye, unmistakeable in colour and shape. The room beyond the door was positively smothered in the stuff.

"Evidence of a rich and abundant food supply." He said. The biggest trouble with Poison Jack was that it had a life of its own. And that wasn't to say it grew everywhere. It meant it was alive and kicking and well enough able to hunt you down and hold you still while it dissolved and absorbed you – all of you.

"Just my fucking luck." Seifer said, turning back to the room full of mosquitoes. "Get bitten and bleed to death in here, or get dissolved and absorbed out there! Oh choices, choices..."

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><p>AN: Blast... If any of this is in the wrong order or makes absolutely zilch amount of sense, please tell me and I'll try my best to do all this again :(


	5. Chapter 3!

"Ja, Herr Brugheisen, ve have an excellent selection of Players zis season." Heimlich, the Game director's secretary, nodded vigorously, handing Brugheisen a cup of tea and taking his stick as he sat down in one of the big, squashy leather arm chairs that sat around the room. It was a television room, with an entire wall dedicated to huge screens. Some were showing a few Players, running down corridors or edging their way round ledges over tanks of boiling acid. It made for a colourful and motley array. "Ze courts are very heavy handed zis year. Lots of condemned, ja!"

"Names?" Brugheisen said curtly. He was an important old man in Government with a fat stomach and a bristling moustache. Although an infrequent visitor to the prison, he liked to keep tabs on who was alive and who wasn't and a visit from him was heralded with much attention and the very best of the Game.

"Err, ve have Stookem on screen tree, running troo ze tunnel." Heimlich pointed roughly through the various Players' names, "Smit' screen four, Pemburghly on seven, Coulthard two – stuck in ze meat grinder..." He chuckled dryly as the man's screams ran through the speakers. "Err, Johnson is on... I don't know vhere he- ah, screen five, zere he is. Thomas died in screen von zis morning and Lupez is also dead on screen siz, ze gun ha-ha..." Another chuckle.

Brugheisen snorted and took a sip of tea. "Hu iz on screen eight?"

"Um," Heimlich retreated to a table at the edge of the room and rooted through one of the drawers. He returned with a clipboard and frowned down at the paper. "No von, I tink... It vas McCormick but he died zis morning. I don't know..."

Looking about he spotted the remote and pressed the number eight. The screen turned on with a ping and revealed a man stepping tentatively through a veritable forest of vines.

"Ah, of course," Heimlich nodded, the remote hanging by his side as he gestured with the clipboard, "Iz Almasy. He iz not on ze list because ve are not allowed to kill him. But ve put him in ze Game anyvay."

"Almasy?" Brugheisen seemed instantly interested, handing his tea over to Heimlich – who balanced it precariously on his clipboard. "Seifer Almasy? Ze var criminal?"

"Ja, I tink he iz in ze green'ouse, viv ze Poison Jack. Iz a nasty plant, but he seems to be doing quite vell."

Indeed, Seifer was picking his way through the plants with the utmost of care. One might even have said he knew what would happen if he didn't.

"Vat are ze bets on him now?" Brugheisen asked, rapt with attention.

"Ve have no bets." Heimlich said after a check of his clipboard, "But if you vould like, I vill take a bet for you?"

"I bet you tree hundred Gil, Almasy vill not be dead before level 0!" Brugheisen said, waving a finger in the air and stomping a foot. "He vill be ze best entertainment in ze whole Game!"

"Err, ja, Herr Brugheisen!" Heimlich agreed quickly, hurrying to put the tea, clipboard and remote down so he could take a note. "Ve tink he vill be good, but he vill not make it passed 'Drink me'. No von ever haz. Iz impossible."

Brugheisen was shaking his head and waving a hand for his tea to be brought over as he watched Seifer inching under a squirming limb of vegetation, the distance between life and death becoming quite unreliable as the plant writhed. "No. He vill make it. He vas not a knight like zat for nothing. Mark my vords, Heimlich, ve vill see a Player on level 0 before zis Game iz over."

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><p>AN: Sorry about the crap accents...


	6. Chapter 4!

"One little speckled frog, sat on a great big log, eating some fucking tasty bugs. Yum, yum..." Seifer muttered to himself as he edged around the rim of a dark and suspicious looking pond. There was something at the bottom of it – it didn't appear to be very deep – but the murky water made it hard to see what was down there. He had briefly entertained the idea of disturbing the water with a stick or something, but the only sticks in the greenhouse were that of the Poison Jack and he didn't really want to poke a potentially sleeping lion with a highly deadly stick.

Those sorts of ideas never seemed to go well for him.

"It jumped into the pool, where it looked nice and cool. And was promptly set upon by the shark living in the pond... Yum, yum..." There was obviously something alive down there, as the sides of the pond were wet and his boots kept slipping on the waterlogged concrete. He might have thought himself lucky to find that the inhabitant of the pond was indeed a fish and not something worse, but knowing his luck it was going to be a huge, bug-eyed angel-fish with massive teeth and a fancy for human flesh.

It always seemed to go that way.

Slipping and sliding his way to the other end of the pond, Seifer turned back to view the way he had come. It seemed like he'd been struggling for hours – and probably had – but he had only managed to traverse a few meters or so from the door. Boredom was beginning to set in and he was beginning to wonder what time it was. By the sounds of his stomach grumbling, it was somewhere near lunch time. The grumbling resonating off the vegetation around him was hardly reassuring.

Stepping from the lip of the pond, he shook himself out. His muscles were tensing up from the act of contortionism he'd had to pull to make it even this far. He dug a few fingers into his left shoulder and cricked his neck. Even at Garden, he had never been known for his rubber-band qualities and before now had rarely been called upon to put them into action. As a result, he was more than a little rusty.

He took a step forwards, putting his foot on what had previously appeared to be a solid bit of ground, covered by a couple of dead and dried leaves. But the deceptively plain bit of flooring was in fact not solid, as he soon found out as his foot went right the way through it, dragging him through the trapdoor too. It wasn't a long way to fall, but it didn't make the stakes that pierced his flesh any blunter.

Seifer gasped for the breath that was knocked from him and gripped the end of the spike protruding from his shoulder. Blood was already beginning to pool around him in steadily increasing amounts and his world was fuzzing around the edges. The drop was obviously far enough to knock someone out as well and if he didn't fall unconscious then he was going to have one hell of a headache.

"Fuck! Fuckity fuck fuck fuck!" He gurgled, trying to stop himself from beginning to hyperventilate. "Fuck me, that _hurt_!"

He had a huge problem and he knew it. Being stabbed as he was through the shoulder and the hip – a few grazes and cuts along his ribs – he was effectively pinned to the floor. Rolling would hurt and sitting up would hurt and raising his entire body was a no-go with his limbs feeling like jelly. Not to mention the fact that he'd sprung quite a serious leak and was pouring blood all over the place.

He gripped the spike tighter and wished for some relief. Where was the adrenaline when he needed it? Where were the endorphins he was supposed to have coursing round his body? Where the hell was he?

* * *

><p>"My my, Heimlich," Brugheisen chuckled as they watched Almasy looking around, a vaguely puzzled look on his face. "It vould appear Almasy haz quite ze tongue on him. Very bad manners indeed."<p>

"Ja, Herr Brugheisen, for a knight he iz very uncout'." Heimlich agreed holding out his hand for Brugheisen's empty tea cup. "Ze ozer Players have few manners, but non are quite as rude as him. Vould you believe he bit ze vingers off a guard on ze first day?"

"Today?"

"No. Ven he first came here. Zere vere only ze stumps left. Very rude. Herr Lorrington vas most distressed! He haz been looking for chances to put Almasy in ze Game ever since."

"Ahh, ja, I vas meaning to ask," Brugheisen glanced momentarily from the screen and pierce Heimlich with a look. He was a tall, thin man with short, curly blond hair and wearing a grey pin-stripe suit. He polished his shoes to a lustre and nearly always had a silver ball-point in his left breast pocket. He tried too hard and Brugheisen had always said so. "How iz Mister Lorrington? I have not heard from him in a vhile."

"Herr Lorrington is alright." Heimlich nodded, averting his eyes from the cold gaze and instead watched as Almasy struggled in the spikes on the screen. "He vas looking forward to ze Game today, but unfortunately had to leave ze district on business. He said to put Almasy in and he vould vatch ze Game later. Iz a shame."

"Ja, a great shame." Brugheisen nodded, turning his attention towards the screen as well. Almasy was trying to move himself off the spikes – at least that's what he assumed the man was attempting – and was swearing up a storm about it. "I vould like to talk to Mister Lorrington today. Vat time vill he return?"

"Late." Heimlich said, going to dispose of the empty teacup and fetch a fresh, hot one. "He vill be back late."

"I am an old man, Heimlich. Ve old men are alvays late. I vill vait for him and talk to him zen."

"Err, ja, Herr Brugheisen. I vill make a new pot of tea."

Brugheisen nodded and waved a jewelled hand in dismissal. Heimlich retreated from the TV room and left the old man in peace. Ah, this was how he liked his life, comfortable, noisy and with a new pot of tea on the go. He chuckled as Almasy finally managed to peel himself from the trap and collapse panting beside it, the oaths still coming thick and fast.

* * *

><p>"What a great fucking idea..." Seifer grumbled as he pulled his t-shirt from his head and began tearing the bottom into strips. "Let's all traipse around a giant fucking mincing machine! Murderous plant-life coming right up! Run around here till you chew your own fucking legs off, boys! It'll be fun! Promise. Oh and err," He grit his teeth as he dabbed gingerly at the wounds on his hip. A couple more inches and he'd have been a prisoneress. "Don't mind the spears; they can't hurt you <em>that<em> much!"

A good shard tug on the bandage nearly had his oatmeal back up to join the show and he gasped in pain, screwing his face up and praying to Hyne no cameras were pointing his way right now. What he really wanted was a good audience while he writhed in pain and used his clothing for first aid. Not.

"And if you can survive the unannounced drop," He continued, voice shaking as he tried to stuff a bit of t-shirt into the wound in – no, sorry, though – his shoulder in an attempt to slow the bleeding. "We'll give you a biccy."

Finally completing his bandage with the remains of his t-shirt, he pocket what was left of the ruined garment and faced his next challenge; standing. It was all very well and good dragging yourself around on a broken body and a hell of a lot of adrenaline when you were standing, but he wouldn't be going anywhere fast from down here. He sure wasn't going to roll himself out.

He scooted himself gingerly to the wall – another white washed one, surprise, surprise – and grit his teeth as he tried to push himself up. He fell back down with a yelp. Too much pressure on that wounded hip. After several readjustments of weight and position, he managed to slide up the wall, left hand scrabbling to keep his balance until he could put both feet on the ground.

He grimaced at the bloody puddle he left behind. The wall wasn't so white anymore either, it was streaked orange and crimson with blood in varying layers of thickness. He watched a dribble falling down the white and briefly considered writing something in his own blood. Something morbid and catchy like... 'One down, seven to go', but thought better of it and shook his head. No, he wasn't _that_ creepy. Yet.

He turned to the rest of the space around him. It was small and white and the first thing he noticed was that it had no doors.

Seifer felt a nerve ticking in his eye. "Well how in the fuck am I meant to get out of here then?" He shouted, nearly stomping his foot but remembering his injury. He settled for grinding his teeth and swearing again. "Fucking idiots! No fucking door? Because of course that's just fucking hilarious!" He waved his left hand dramatically in the air – not wanting to hurt himself further he was left with very little with which to display his dissatisfaction. "I'd like to see you try and get through this you fat, old, hairy cowards! Motherfucking-!"

He turned and stumped to an end wall and began patting it down as far as he could reach in the vague hope there might be something there. There was nothing and the other walls proved to be just as awe-inspiringly plain.

He would have slumped to the floor again in defeat if it wasn't for the struggling of getting back up again. He let out a dry chuckle as he thought of climbing back out the way he'd come in. It was a way wasn't it? But that of course raised the question of how in the fuck he was meant to get up there without a ladder and with only two working limbs, both on the same side of his body.

* * *

><p><em><strong>AN:**_ Urgh.. sorry this is so confusing, I appreciate anyone bothering to re-read this and I really apologise, but it looks like it's going to be confusing for a hell of a lot longer. It looks as though I'm going to end up scrapping most of what I had (plot-wise) you know, he was running down a series of corridors and encountering puzzle-like traps, but that's just not working very well and I'm finding it boring to write, which must mean it's boring to read. So, I'm altering it, not what the Halucen-ex system is about, but more how Seifer sustains his injuries than anything else. I'm going to try and drag it back to my original plan, which was falling down a rabbithole ;)

So bear with me please :D

-Okami


	7. Chapter 5!

"Squall, may I talk with you please?" Quistis asked, her head poked round the door of the swanky new office Squall had been awarded with his new title.

"Commander." He said bluntly, not even bothering to look up from the paper work he was squinting at. Quistis raised her eyebrow, but let his cheek slide. He might have been right, but he didn't have to be so sharp about it.

"Sorry, may I talk with you please?"

"I'm busy."

"It's important."

"Whatever."

"Great." She said, coming fully into the office and shutting the door behind her. His eyes flicked up briefly and she detected a hint of annoyance. "I'd like you to sign a petition to have Seifer's trial revised. It's a-"

"What?" Squall had stopped his work to look at her properly now, both eyebrows raised. He almost looked like he didn't believe that she'd just said what she'd just said.

"Seifer's trial was unfair." She said, walking forward to drop her portfolio on his desk and push it towards him. He didn't touch it. "The verdict was unfair. I'm pushing for a revision of the evidence and his sentencing."

"On what grounds?" His eyebrows were down and in a firm line. This was a topic she had been expecting resistance on – lord knows everyone else had bitten her head off about it, why shouldn't Squall?

"Firstly, that all the evidence wasn't properly examined. And secondly, the jury and court members were emotionally compromised at the time of the trial."

"Bullshit." He said, neglecting to pronounce the 'T' as he turned back to his paperwork. She knew that signal; not making eye contact meant that the conversation was over and she was meant to salute and leave. It was the way he had always gotten rid of people he didn't like - everyone - but it had become more pronounced since his promotion. She betted he didn't give Rinoa the cold shoulder.

"No, not bullshit, Cadet." She hissed, pushing her portfolio across the table and shoving all his papers and office stationary into his lap. She grabbed his collar and pulled him forwards until their noses were almost touching. His eyes narrowed and she knew it was more the name that got him this time than the proximity. "This is fact and I mean to leave this room with your signature on the fucking paper, alright? If you've got a problem, we can take this to the training centre and you can see just how much your attitude means to me. Don't forget who taught you to fight in the first place and don't you dare pull that superiority shit with me _little brother_, because I will tear you apart. Don't get cocky and don't be so fucking vain. Also; Spit. Your. Tees."

Squall's expression darkened a shade further and it looked for a moment as though he might attack her back, but instead he asked, "Why does it matter?"

"It matters," Quistis said, letting go of his collar and straightening up, brushing her hands down her uniform to eliminate the invisible creases. She walked around his side of the desk and leant over his shoulder, opening the portfolio. "Because I believe he is innocent and has been done an injustice in being locked away for something I don't think he can be held accountable for."

Squall looked at a picture of Seifer atop the Sorceress' float in silence. The man in the picture looked vicious, slightly mad and a little tiny bit like Seifer Almasy. He had a huge smile on his face; all his pearly whites gleaming in the lights of the parade and his skin seemed to glow. He looked like how Squall felt on a Monday morning. But he looked very little like the bully who was Seifer Almasy; the smile was flat, where _his_ curled at the edges, slanting like a wolf's with it's hackles raised.

Quistis continued, spreading the pictures and several photocopied pages - from what looked like highly important documents - across the table so that he could see them better. She picked up one of his hands and folded the fingers around a piece of paper, then held it in front of his face for him. "I believe there is a level of possession that goes on between every Sorceress and her Knight, from the moment they meet until the moment one of them dies. I also believe that this level of possession increases the more time the Knight and Sorceress spend together. Are you following this, Cadet?"

He nodded, gritting his teeth and ignoring the name.

"Good. That means that you are being possessed by Rinoa, just in the same way that Seifer was possessed by Ultimecia and Adel. His level of possession was much stronger though, I think you'll agree, and we can therefore say that because it happened so immediately he had no control of his own body during the time of his possession, right from the moment he came into contact with Ultimecia.

"Odine's book on possession clearly states that a body under possession has no control of his or her actions and has very little will to break out of the possession. Being as Seifer was so close to Ultimecia so much of the time, the power of her possession over him wasn't given enough time to get weak enough for him to try and challenge it. If this is the case then Seifer cannot be held accountable for his actions and his trial is therefore wrong. I can only assume the result was manipulated by the jury.

"Now then, the piece of paper you have in your hand is an extract of the current Balamb judiciary constitution. Please pay attention to the line 'Where a judicial associate is deemed to have been effected by the crimes of the accused, they are to be deemed emotionally compromised and must be removed from the trial.' This means that anyone who lost a loved one, lost their home, had their beliefs challenged or took a personal opinion because of the war, cannot be allowed on the trial. I think it's fair to say that everyone in that court room was there because they wanted a piece of him, thus making them emotionally compromised and the results of the trial must then be vetoed."

Squall frowned at the paper in his hand and shook his head. "There is no evidence to say that-"

"I have evidence." Quistis cut him off, producing another piece of paper and holding it in front of his nose. But she wouldn't let him touch this one. "It says that you were on that jury. And you were certainly emotionally compromised. In fact I'd say you still are." She folded the paper and tucked it safely in her pocket. Squall returned to examining the papers in front of him. "Any evidence of a single person from the deciding party being unsuitable for the jurisdiction means that trial is eligible for revision. And trust me when I say that all of you are unsuitable for deciding a man's fate."

"Whatever." Squall murmured.

"So you'll be signing the petition?"

"No."

She sighed. Did it always have to be so hard? Rinoa was a much easier target for this sort of thing; she wasn't nearly as stubborn a mule as her boyfriend.

"I don't want this to come to violence, Squall." She said calmly, standing up straight and folding her arms over her chest. "So just sign the paper. It's right in front of you."

Indeed it was. Unsurprisingly, there were very few names on it although the date of creation detailed a few days ago and Quistis was nothing if not industrious with her work. What _was_ surprising however were the names on the list. He was expecting Quistis' name and even Raijin and Fuujin. But Rinoa was not someone he had expected to feel any sympathy towards the traitor – it was for her safety that he had put the man away in the first place – and he would have eaten his hat before he'd thought _Xu_ of all people would think him innocent. It seemed there was a little more truth in Quistis' promises of violence than he had thought. Nothing short of a threat and a damn good thrashing would have made Xu sign this bloody sheet.

He raised an eyebrow as he noticed his match box sat in his lap. He had half a mind to burn the papers.

"Get this thing out of my face, Instructor." He said, sweeping the whole lot off the table with his hand – in much the same way she had upset his work – "And didn't you have something important you wanted to talk to me about?"

Behind him, Quistis' breathing stopped for a brief second and he thought she might be agonising over the mess he made of her 'evidence'. But like many a time before, he was wrong.

"Yes, I wanted to talk about your next medical appointment." She said cheerily. Before she smashed his nose off the desk.

"I don't blame her."

Squall's face immediately contorted into an expression of mingled anger and disbelief, but Rinoa didn't let him express his disagreement, tweaking his nose into a better position and muffling his yelp of pain with a wad of tissues as she mopped up more of the ensuing blood waterfall.

"What if it had been me possessed by Ultimecia? Would you just turn me away?"

Of course not. It was a stupid question and she darn well knew it. But still, it paid for being said out loud. Squall rolled his eyes and tried to remove her hands from his face, as loving as she could be, right now she was just being plain horrible. She swatted his hands away and gave his nose another re-adjusting tweak, watching with guilty satisfaction as his eyes watered.

"You know the verdict was unfair and personally, I think you should support Quistis' endeavour."

He shook his head slightly as Rinoa tilted her head on the side, appraising her work. "I carbd subbord 'er. She's nudds!"

"Honey, really?" Rinoa frowned, using her best no-nonsense tone and giving him her scariest glare. Which wasn't all that frightening in the grand scheme of things. "You never think about these things do you? Seifer is going through the same thing you and I are going through now. He is no different from us!"

"He is dibberend! I'm nod a psycopad and you're nod a homicidal maniac! We're compledely dibberend!" He was glaring at her. She hated that expression. She cast cure on him a little stronger than was entirely necessary and narrowed her eyes as the static crackled across his face. "And if it was you, of course I would have signed that paper. I just don't see why Quistis has to go and get herself involved in something that doesn't concern her!"

"I think it's fair to say it obviously concerns her." Rinoa said, folding her arms and raising one eyebrow in an unimpressed arch. Squall stood up from where she had previously pinned him – one of the sofas in his office – and went to the window to check his reflection. His nose was still perfect. Thank Hyne.

"I mean it doesn't involve her."

"Of course it involves her, Squall! She is as much involved in this as you would be were I the one locked up for eternity."

"You and I are together though, Rinoa." He had fallen into a patronising tone and she wasn't sure she liked that. In fact she was sure she didn't like it at all. "I'm entitled to be involved in cases of your confinement and subsequent death."

"Wow," She drawled, her other eyebrow joining the first in a race towards her hairline. "Don't I feel special?"

Squall nodded, rubbing the sides of his bridge in inspection. It was as if that bitch had never even touched it. Thankfully there was nothing his Rinoa couldn't fix. "You feel special to me."

At any other time it might have been sweet, but this was not any other time and she was determined not to be swayed from her anger by pretty – if ridiculously rare – compliments. She might be a hopeless romantic, but that didn't mean she didn't know when to be a little manipulative at times.

"Haven't you ever thought I might be missing something though?" She asked, gearing herself up to burst into tears at the appropriate moment. Despite it all, she didn't believe that Seifer could do all that by himself. She had dated the guy for heaven's sake and he had never seemed any different from any other fun-loving teenager she had ever met. Other than Squall and maybe Quistis. But they didn't count. They weren't fun-loving at _all_.

"No. Of course not." Squall said, turning to give her a brief glance before going to sit as his desk and re-arrange his office stationary. "You're all I ever looked for. And I'm glad I've found you."

"But what about Quisty? She's more perfect than I am." She brought out her puppy dog pout, the one that always worked on her father so it had damn well better work on Squall.

"No one is more perfect than you are." Squall said, carefully making sure that every pen was in line with the edge of the desk and in height order. Rinoa hadn't moved from her place on the floor and she was now fiddling with the edge of one of the arm cushions. He glanced up at her, watched her for a few seconds when she didn't reply, then asked carefully, "Something the matter?"

"You only think that because you love me. What if Quistis is only doing this because she loves Seifer?"

Squall was – for a second at least – flabbergasted. Quistis? In love with that ape? Over his dead body maybe, but not at any other time, surely? "I- What? She hates him! We all do! Why would she love _him_?"

"Then what else would you call this?" She had tears in her eyes now, little diamonds of feeling that she was preparing to shed for Quistis and Seifer. Good lord.

"A sense of sisterly duty?" Squall suggested, stolidly ignoring the impending catastrophe and prodding at his nose again. The twitches hadn't yet subsided and he ended up poking himself firmly in the eye. "Becoming prematurely senile? How the heck would I know?"

This was the moment that Rinoa had been waiting for and she turned the waterworks on full blast. "You don't know because you don't care about them, do you?" She wailed, rifling through her arsenal of pitches to find the right level of hysteria with which to burst his ear drums. "If you cared about them then you would sign that petition! Accept you were wrong! I don't want you to become some hard-headed stoic! I've dealt with enough of that from the people I love already!"

She got to her feet and approached the desk, eyes bleeding emotion as she half begged, half demanded, "Why can't you just accept that Quistis is right?"

He didn't reply. He only stared at her in surprise as she sniffled a moment longer, then turned for the door. "I'll hear your decision tonight, Honey." And then she left and Squall merely sat there and gawped at the shut door.

After a little while, he got up from his desk and walked to the window, both hands clasped behind his back and his right eye watering like mad. Rinoa was rarely anything but calm and considerate and if she ever became genuinely upset over something, it was a messy and uncomfortable affair. What had just transpired had certainly been an uncomfortable affair. He sighed and rubbed at his scar, careful not to catch either eye this time.

In the good year and a half that he had known Rinoa, he had only seen her truly upset 3 times, this most recent occasion making the third. He had sworn to himself that the second would be the last. Stopping this hurt was as simple as writing his name on a sheet of paper but for some reason he didn't want to do it. Writing his name on the paper would mean that he agreed with Quistis, which ultimately meant that he had forgiven Seifer and was perfectly content for him to roam around in civil society, fate of the world be damned. Which of course he didn't, hadn't and wasn't. It caused quite the problem.

And then there was the case of his feelings. Or lack thereof. He had always maintained that he _did_ have feelings -thank you very much – and that he had merely neglected to show them before. But no matter how much Rinoa wanted him to feel sorry for Quistis and sorry for Seifer and admit that he was wrong and play nice and happy, he couldn't. He might have feelings, but they only reached so far.

Which brought about another problem. Quistis' feelings for Seifer. It was something he had never even considered and the more he thought about it, the more absurd he found it to be. He had known Quistis from the moment he had entered the orphanage all those years ago and since then he had been her constant muse. She used to try and entice him into playing in the sand with her, building sand castles and just generally spending time together. He always refused, regarding her with the same cold gaze he reserved for those pretty enough or smart enough to rival his own looks and intelligence. But her attention was perpetual.

It had changed of course the second Seifer set foot through the door and instead of trying to play with Squall, Quistis seemed to spend the vast majority of her time beating Seifer off with a sharp stick. Invariably she was beating Seifer off of Squall, but she still went and got the stick with the intentions of touching Seifer with it. When Zell had asked why the stick was so long, Quistis had replied that she didn't want to get any Seifer germs and the case was laid to rest. But it didn't stop her trying to hit him all the time. Now that he thought about it, in the short time that they had had Seifer in their midst compared to the times when he wasn't, the unruly boy seemed to have soaked up more of Quistis' attentions than when she was forcefully trying to give then to Squall.

Perhaps back then there was a little truth in Rinoa's words. But not now, not after Seifer had betrayed them all and started a war against his home and his people. He was hated and despised by all of them, including Quistis. Squall knew he would never forgive Seifer, he hadn't after the cranberry incident and he certainly wouldn't now. The others all felt the same way. It was too much to forgive.

He sighed and lifted the latch to open the window, letting some much needed air in to freshen the room. Rinoa's perfume was mixing with the remnants of Quistis' and it was making him feel a little light headed. The fresh air filled his lungs and he nodded slowly. He had always been a selfish basterd, but if you were going to change then there was no time like the present. Still, he thought as he wandered back to his desk and picked up the phone, punching in the extension number for Quistis' dorm-room; it didn't mean he had to forgive Seifer in person. This was merely to please Rinoa and shut Quistis up.


	8. Chapter 6!

_**A/N:** _The confusion! It's frying my brain!

* * *

><p>Seifer paced around, using the wall to hold himself up as he considered the hole in the ceiling. How was he going to get up? He didn't think he would be able to lift his arms above his head, let alone use them to hold onto anything... He cursed his bad luck and misfortune at having gotten himself into this mess. If he hadn't have followed the Sorceress, then this wouldn't be happening. Or at least, it wouldn't be happening to him.<p>

He paced a bit more, walking round and round the small room until-

Click!

He stopped and looked down. Click? He didn't go 'Click' very often. What was that? He looked about and there, on the floor some 3 feet in front of him, was a speck. He squinted at him. Was _that_ what went 'click'? He hobbled over to it and bent over, prodding it with a finger. The speck attached itself and he picked it up. Upon closer inspection - and taking care not to breathe too hard lest he blow it away – the speck turned out to be a key. A tiny, weenie little key.

Seifer frowned. Good lord. What in Hyne's name was he meant to do with a key the size of a grain of sand? Was there a tiny door he was meant to fit it into? He looked about, perfectly sure he had _not_ seen a door when he was stomping about angrily looking for a way out. Missing an infinitely small key was one thing, missing an entire door was another altogether.

He did a double take. "Well fuck me sideways..." He muttered, turning round to look at it. "How did I miss that?"

It was a door. Or at least a miniture version of what could otherwise be recognised as a door. What this one was supposed to be, he had no idea. Certainly there was no way he was going to _fit_ through it.

He hobbled over to it and struggled to his knees, wincing and sucking in breath through his teeth as he forced the torn muscles on his hip to move. It was so small, it was probably no bigger than his hand, but there was a keyhole small enough to fit the key he had stuck on the end of his finger.

He felt his insides beginning to wring themselves out. He had a very bad feeling about this and it had a hell of a lot to do with that infernal book they kept handing out. The first two copies, Seifer had burnt and torn to pieces, effectively ruining them out of spite, but they kept coming around with more copies, one of them was even blood splattered, but it took none of the mysticism out of the book, in fact it only seemed to increase it; Alice in Wonderland.

Seifer had always hated the book as a child, avoiding it being read to him at all costs, he hated the idea of slowly going mad in a world of your own creation. And what was worse: He would _know_ he was going mad! It was like developing dementia, you realised that it was happening to you, you realised that you were losing your mind and it killed inside to know that everything you once were, you would never be again. It was different from getting old. It was different from being possessed. That was the Sorceress's doing, but this, if he gave in, would be giving himself over to something he had always sought to avoid.

He considered the hole in the ceiling again and what would be waiting for him up there if he went. Poison Jack. He shuddered at the thought, and in his current condition, there was no way he would be able to contort and wriggle his way out of harm's way. It just wasn't going to happen. He was caught.

He looked back at the door and sighed. "Ok, fine, so what if I was to try and fit through the stupidly tiny door? How am I meant to do it?"

How had Alice done it? Well she'd eaten something hadn't she? No, no, she'd drunk something... "Drink me."

He looked about for a little bottle with the words 'Drink Me' written on it. There was nothing there. He sighed and shook his head. Normally he would be angry about now with so many things making fun of him, pretending he was blind and couldn't see a door, pretending he was too big to fit through it, pretending there was a solution when clearly there wasn't. But he wasn't angry right now. He was a little annoyed, but he didn't have the energy for pissed off. Looked like the blood-loss was starting to get to him.

* * *

><p>Brugheisen accepted the cup of tea from Heimlich, then sent him away again and turned his attention to the screen. Almasy was sat on the floor of the little room, looking at the little door and holding the little key up on his finger. It had been an exceedingly long time since he'd seen anybody go through this route, so he was interested to see how Almasy would fair. So far he seemed calm, after that little outburst a while ago and he seemed to be contemplating what he should do next. An active mind. He was glad he made that bet with Heimlich earlier.<p>

Brugheisen sipped at the tea, holding the cup with both hands and warming his old bones. Politics had changed a lot over time and his tolerance for the crippling ways these youngsters played with each other had gone from little to less. But the Game always stayed the same. He had been an avid follower of barely a handful of Players over the years he had spent in this room, sipping scolding tea and watching people die. He could recall the closest Game he ever watched. A matured member of the terrorist bourgeoisie had been set up for execution by firing squad and had managed to Play through the Game to level 1 before he took a wrong turn and ended up spitting his own brains out. It was mere irony that had him meet his match against the ceiling mounted machine guns. Compared to him, Almasy was just a little boy. But it would be interesting to watch.

As a rule, those one would expect to be good at this were not. And those expected to be useless often succeeded. Witt and cunning were only as fast as the feet that carried them and if the Player spent too much time assessing and checking his situation, he was likely to be caught by something much bigger and far more dangerous than the often tiny thing they were originally agonising over. But he wasn't going to start counting his chickens before they'd hatched. Leave it up to Almasy to be the exception that made his rule.

Apparently deciding the door wasn't going to be going anywhere without his key, Almasy began trying to fit the hey on his finger into the hole in the door. It would likely be a little while before he managed it, but it was progress. Now what was beyond this again? Brugheisen couldn't remember, it had been so long since he'd watched this level anyway.

The image of a long staircase appeared on the screen, leading upwards and it jogged his memory. Ah yes, now he could recall. He had seen quite a number meet their match against this little cookie and could only hope that Almasy was a fast runner.

* * *

><p><em><strong>AN:**_ There we go, I'll see what else I can cook up...


	9. Chapter 7!

_**A/N:**_ Good lord, this is turning out to be so much more trouble than it had promised at the start x( Ahh well, I hope it'll be worth it in the end xD

* * *

><p>"Hello, this is Quistis Trepe, Balamb Garden SeeD rank S calling. I would like to speak with Mr Lorrington, please."<p>

"Off course Miz Trepe, von moment pleaze."

...

"Ah, Miss Trepe, I was expecting your call. How may I help you?"

"You were expecting me?"

"Not you personally, I was expecting a call would come through eventually, from Balamb Garden. How may I help you?"

"Ah yes, I'm calling about the status of one of your prisoners. A Mr Almasy."

"We are in possession of such a man. What is the problem?"

"I would like to arrange a meeting with him at some point over the next few days please."

"I'm not sure-"

"It is of the utmost importance and will greatly affect your position should I not be allowed to make contact with him at any point."

"What would this meeting be about?"

"Determining his mental state, how much he remembers from the time of his possession by the sorceresses, how in control of his own body he was during the war, etc."

"Mhmm, and what would all this information be going towards? If you don't mind my asking, of course."

"Judicial re-trial, Mr Lorrington."

"Oh my."

"I must have this meeting arranged with Mr Almasy to be at the soonest convenience."

"I'm afraid he won't be available for the next few days, Miss Trepe. Perhaps even a week."

"Why? He's not going anywhere is he?"

"No. But I would prefer it if-"

"_My_ soonest convenience, Mr Lorrington. I don't have a lot of time at my disposal. I'm a very busy person and I need this information at once. I will arrive at the prison in two days time. Whatever needs to be done with Almasy can either be completed by then or it will have to be postponed. Is that alright?"

"Well yes, bu-"

"Thank you. Good day, Mr Lorrington."

_Click_.

Lorrington put the phone down, a grey expression crossing his face. This was going to cause him a lot of trouble, he could tell already. He thought grimly that instructing Heimlich to patch all calls through to his mobile was a bad idea. He could have just not known that Trepe had rung and everything would have been far less stressful that it had managed to become in the space of a two minute phone call. And here he was, sat in a board room waiting for the bank's director to return with the reports from his latest induction, while out there in the middle of the desert, Almasy was running around in an underground maze specifically designed to pop him off. And the Trepe lady was going to arrive there in two days expecting to see him alive and well enough to talk to! Somehow he didn't think she would be too pleased if they presented her with a body bag. Particularly not a full one.

He fished a handkerchief from his suit breast pocket and mopped at his now sweating brow. A judicial re-trial? But the original verdict had been unanimous! Surely there was no need for a re-trial? Besides, Trepe would have had to have been on the Jury for her to be able to call a re-trial, and he was fairly sure she hadn't been there. At all. She was still unconscious at that point, if he remembered rightly.

Flipping through the contacts on his phone, Lorrington selected one and rung it. Heimlich answered on the third ring.

"Thiz iz ze office of-"

"I know, Heimlich, it's me." Lorrington snapped. "Quickly, what is Almasy's status?"

"Err..." There were the sounds of quick footsteps and then the tinny noises of the television speakers before Heimlich answered. "He iz injured in ze shoulder and ze hip. He iz in ze acid room. Wid ze stairs."

Lorrington gasped; sudden fear for the punishments Trepe would undoubtedly inflict upon him should Almasy be killed, washed through his system. "Quick!" He squeaked, bouncing in his seat and gripping the phone tighter, his knuckles turning white with the pressure. "Turn it off! Turn it off! Quick, Heimlich! Turn it off!"

There were more sounds of running feet and a clatter as the phone was dropped to the floor.

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><p>Brugheisen watched, bemused as Heimlich informed the mobile of Almasy's position, received some screamed orders, dropped the phone and tore out of the room, leaving the device still shrieking on the floor. It was quite interesting if he was honest and he was more than happy to see Heimlich run off his feet at barely a moment's notice. Perhaps Almasy wasn't meant to be in the Game at all. Maybe Heimlich had acted on his own and was soon to be fired for causing damage to some precious prison bait. That would be good. He would enjoy seeing the rat-like little man being taken down a peg or two.<p>

For his part, Almasy was already half way up the staircase and running with a limp.

The phone was now calling desperately from the floor for Heimlich's swift return. Muttering about peace and quiet, Brugheisen struggled from his chair and made his way over to the phone, using the coffee table and other surrounding furniture for support. It was a shame really that he was getting so old. He was now nearly entirely reliant on his stick and without it he felt... vulnerable.

Bending slowly, grimacing as his old back-muscles complained loudly, he got a hold of the phone. The struggle back to vertical took longer than it ought to have done and left him red faced and puffing. After struggling back to his chair, he collapsed into it and let himself just sit for a moment, getting his breath back. This was honestly embarrassing and he was glad Heimlich wasn't there to see him, he would never hear the end of it otherwise.

His countenance returned to him, he raised the phone to his ear, still shrieking and said, "He iz gone, James! Stop shouting, you vill deafen me."

"Almasy!" Lorrington squeaked, "Is he hurt?"

"No." Brugheisen said, watching as Almasy continued to climb, seemingly oblivious to the pool of acid that was slowly creeping its way up the staircase behind him. By now, the stairs themselves would have spun, creating a slide and Almasy would have slipped down it to the deadly liquid below. But obviously Heimlich had reached the control panel in time and averted his death. "He iz fine."

Lorrington exhaled loudly on the end of the line and Brugheisen could just imagine his friend mopping his brow, fanning himself with his hankie and maybe slouching, relieved in his seat. "How is he doing then?" Came a shaky voice, confirming Brugheisen's suspicions immediately.

"He iz at ze top of ze stairs." He narrated. "Valking trough ze doors. Diz iz ze electric room iz it not?"

Lorrington gulped audibly. "Heimlich should have turned it off."

Brugheisen raised his eyebrows. "Iz Almasy not meant to be in ze Game?"

"He is..." Lorrington said, sounding hesitant and most likely chewing on his lip. "But a SeeD, Quistis Trepe, wants to see him in two days time. So if he's dead we will definitely have a law suit on our hands."

"Ah. So you have turned ze Game off. Right. But James, vhat about ze oder Players? It vill be easy for zem as vell."

"We'll call it a technical difficulty." James said, sounding a lot more sure of himself now that it was clear Almasy wasn't disintegrating at the bottom of some transmutating stairwell. "The other Players can begin their levels again."

"And Almasy?"

"He can restart it in a few days. Once Trepe is finished with him."

"Very vell."

* * *

><p><strong><em><span>AN:_** Urgh... Reorganisation sucks x(


	10. Chapter 8!

_**A/N:**_ Hmm, I apologise for the wait, I have once again done something stupid and ruined my fingers and so could not type quickly enough (If you must know I put my hand through a glass, suffered sever lacerations and damaged the knuckle of my index finger). But I am returned again and I have decided that I may not get rid of this fic - I have already thought up an ending for it and I warn you, there may be sequels so stop me quickly if it is so ghastly that you cannot bare to continue (I won't be offended, I shall think of it more as you saving me from myself as a good friend should) (Bloody hell, how come I can't right this much this quickly when it comes to updating fics? It's taken me about a minute and 30 seconds to write all this lol).

So I apologise for the delay - the next chapter of Rabbithole.

And in case you cannot remember, when we left him, Seifer was falling face first towards an electrified flooring pannel.

Enjoy :D (Please).

* * *

><p>The floor, he decided was warm. And extremely uncomfortable. And it was now covered in his blood. As though the first blood-letting hadn't been enough, he was now suffering a nose bleed. Of course it was fairly expected after having hit the ground face first from a sensible height of six feet, but that didn't mean he couldn't complain about it. Hyne, he wasn't sure what he must have looked like, but he was fairly sure it wasn't pretty. There. He said it. He wasn't pretty. Now to hell with all those who called him vain. Vanity had nothing to do with it, it was merely a healthy self-preservation instinct that entitled he cleaned his hair, combed his teeth and brushed his face. No wait, scratch that. He must have hit his head harder than he thought.<p>

He looked down the corridor to the door at the end of the hallway. It couldn't have been more than 30 meters away at most, but he wasn't so sure how much of those thirty meters was safe. Knowing his luck, not much of it. Oh well. It wasn't so far to the end and after that, he was fairly sure that it would be a breeze. After all, he was trained by SeeD and had fought alongside the sorceresses – admittedly not by much choice of his own – and he prided himself on making even the most menial of tasks seem mammoth. No wait. Argh, fuck it.

He dragged himself to his feet. "Onwards…" He muttered to himself as he cast a glance at the corridor's first trap. It was a fine indication of the things that were to come and would have given him a little more course for distress had he been the type to stress over things. He mused as he continued his careful edging along the corridor, that this might have been the type of situation he was supposed to stress over, but so far he had not encountered anything… dramatic, merely sneaky.

The next trap he found was little over 3 meters from the first one, which was around 27 meters from the door and if he had gone 8 meters, encountered 2 traps and still had what he reckoned must have been close to 140 more meters left to go, he was going to find a lot more traps before he met the end. It was almost more than his freedom was worth…

This particular trap looked like nothing more than a gap running up the walls and across the ceiling and the floor. However, further analysis with the help of a zip off his cargos revealed that there was in fact a concealed guillotine in the ceiling and – had he stepped naively into the gap himself – it was perfectly capable of slicing right through him. The zipper tag hadn't stood a chance.

Seifer frowned at the cut off end of his zipper and twisted his lips to one side. So far, the Game was failing to impress and he was gaining confidence in himself and his ingenuity. Perhaps all the other Players had been idiots? Yes he had survived one trap and was determined to survive this one too, but both of them could certainly kill a man if he were stupid enough to wander into them. Although if you were stupid enough to walk into such obvious traps, you were clearly the village idiot and therefore it was highly unlikely that he was to find any real 'problems' on this level.

He watched as the guillotine rose slowly back towards the ceiling, reflecting his feet, legs, tummy, chest and finally his head as it disappeared through the gap. Feeling faintly irritated at the sight of the blade rising slowly back the way it had come – almost as if the designers were mocking him with their showcasing of the weapon – he stuck the rest of the zip into the gap and stepped calmly over the blade when it whizzed passed. It would take more than that to kill Seifer Almasy.

"Pansies." He muttered as he tottered carefully down the corridor again. It took him around half an hour – he guessed – to get to his next obstacle; something.

At first he almost didn't see it, but the light glanced across it just right and for a second, it almost looked like there was wire strung across the hallway. Seifer stopped walking. Wires were a common defence tactic in government houses and vaults or anywhere else you wouldn't want someone to get into. And one wire usually meant a couple of hundred others not too far away. Seifer rolled his eyes, Garden had certainly covered this in the training sequences, in fact he thought Trepe had personally lectured him on correct ambush procedure. Personally his first inclinations when ambushed were to duck, run for cover, then lose his temper with the nearest unfortunate idiot, but apparently these things had to have procedures. It was at times like these – although admittedly he couldn't think of any other particular times – that he was glad Trepe's voice had always stuck in his head.

"_First; visually assess the situation"_ Ok, so he had a deceptively plain looking hallway with what appeared to be a wire at eyelevel strung across it. Were there others? He went to kneel and check from a different angle, but his foot met with slight resistance and upon peering over his shoulder, he found there were indeed others and one them was currently cutting a path through the sole of his boot. He dragged his foot back and frowned. This was a trap he might have a little more trouble with.

"_Second; physically assess the situation." _This of course meant throwing a rock or poking the ambusher with a stick. Not terribly effective if your ambush came in the form of 20 armed men hefting around AK-47s like they were some sort of toy, but in the event that your ambush was a mine field or a Bandasnatch or – heaven help you – a wire, poking it with a barge pole was a relatively smart thing to do. However, this brought to light a small problem, he had neither a rock, stick, nor a barge pole with which to poke this potential ambusher. So instead, he pulled the remains of his t-shirt out of his pocket and poked the end of it into the air in front of him. The novelty of this action was not lost on Seifer and – had the severity of the situation not made for quite a sombre atmosphere – he could almost call it amusing. He was sure he must have looked like a first class plonker to the people watching the cameras, but he wasn't going to let his pride get him killed; he had a reputation to uphold after all!

The shirt end meeting no resistance, he shuffled forwards a little bit and waved the it again, up and down and side to side. Again it met nothing, so he moved forward again and almost immediately shaved the end of his rag off with a downwards sweep. Holy Hyne, this was going to be a very long few meters of hallway.

"_The final stage is to make sure that- ALMASY PUT THAT FUCKING THING DOWN!" _Well, maybe he wasn't so glad that Trepe's voice had stuck in his head when she could scream at him without even needing to be there, but at least she had gotten him passed another obstacle. His legs, arms and also his neck had suffered at the merciless hands of the wires – or whatever the fucking things were – and he felt sore from having to bend himself into all sorts of shapes just to struggle passed the infinite death traps in his path. He had never really considered becoming a contortionist, but now it appeared he was actually quite good at it, although the multitude of bleeding cuts all over his body might have suggested otherwise.

He rubbed at the cut over his collarbone and grumbled. That one had hurt, the wire cutting off a sliver of skin as he tried to shimmy between two horizontally strung wires. It was fair to say a lot of cussing and swearing had filled the otherwise silent corridor and more than a few middle fingered salutes had been thrown in the direction of, well, everywhere. This might have only been a Game, but he just wasn't the type to Play nicely. It was rude and cantankerous, or nothing at all.

The 20 meters or so of wired corridor now behind him, Seifer turned to the rest of the space. There wasn't really all that much left to go, only another 100 meters, and at the rate he was travelling at, it would only take him another 12 hours to get there. Oh what joys that could be derived from dancing like a puppet to someone else's tune.

Sighing, Seifer scratched at the back of his head as he surveyed the remainder of the corridor. As far as he could tell there was nothing there, but then again there had been very little to indicate the previous traps either. He was beginning to bore with the idea of a long corridor with a trap concealed every few meters, but he supposed it made it easier to kill the Players if there were no corners to hide behind or any indications that death was about to bite them on the bum.

It looked as though there was very little left for him to do except continue to Play the Game. There was no denying – he thought as he continued to walk – that his heart was beating like a drum inside his chest and his palms had been sweating since the handcuffs had been taken off in the first room and he _really_ didn't want to wander into something that was specifically designed to snuff him out, but he had also always enjoyed the thrill of the unknown and the adrenaline that would rush passed him in difficult situations and there was also no denying the fact that he was looking forward – in a morbid sort of way – to the next obstacle and his impending doom. It was almost the same as the training sequences he went through in Balamb, back before he got himself banged up in the slammer.

The rest of the 7 meters sported nothing more challenging than some ball bearing's rolling across the floor and he nursed a ball bearing shaped hurt on his bottom as he reached the end of the corridor. This was a joke. It had to be a joke. There was no way that this was seriously the first level right? Aside from the tunnel in his shoulder and hip, the fingernails he was now missing, the bruises on his bottom, the scratches and his bloody nose – alright granted that was quite the list of injuries – the Game had proven to be no more challenging than getting into Rinoa's underwear. He wouldn't like to do it again and it felt more like he was playing with children than anything else. It was pathetic. And he was certainly not in the mood for the door to be bricked up, but as sod's law would have it, the bloody thing was.

For a second, he could only stare at the red bricks that faced him. He closed his eyes when one began to twitch and held his breath in an effort to control his temper. The relatively good humour he had been in when he entered the corridor was disappearing quicker than a girls underwear on prom night.

"Fucking brilliant!" He hissed, whirling round and yelling at the rest of the hallway, "Fucking brilliant! I really hope your laughing up there you colossal pricks! Cause this is abso-fucking-lutely hilarious isn't it! Fuck you!"

He turned round again and kicked the brick work, kicking it as hard as he could as thought it was _its _fault he couldn't get through. "Fucking Game! It's not even that much fun! I'll show you fun! Pricks! Cocksuckers! Motherfucking arseholes! Fucking _arghhhh_-!"

It was only when he had worn himself out, shouting at and kicking the bricks that he paused, turning and leaning his shoulder on it and looking up as sweat trickled down his neck. It was a workout he didn't need and a stupid idea to wear himself out. Then, an idea hit him. What he was looking at right now, staring up at the ceiling and wiping the sweat from his eyes, was the ventilation system. He blinked a couple of times. Was this the way forwards? Was this... an escape?

* * *

><p><em><strong>Next time on<strong>_... You know what, I can't be bothered. I'm sure you can pretty much work out what the heck he's going to do. I mean, it doesn't take a genius to work out where this fic is headed. I try to make it more interesting and hard to work out but it never seems to work... Sniff sniff.

R&R :)

-Okami


	11. Author Note: subject  rewrite

Author note.

I believe I wrote a little while ago that I was going to scrap this. I will not. Let me lay to rest any worries that this will all be going in the bin. I wrote on my profile that I would be ninning some fics, and I did, but they were so old and so rubbish and I don't think I ever had any intentions of finishing them, they were merely plot bunnies that attacked, had their wicked way and then left promptly, without so much as a by your leave. So with that in mind, I will readdress what I wrote in that author note some while ago:

I will be rewriting this, not scrapping it.

The plot at the minute is far too higgledy-piggledy to make any sense of and it seems to have no estimation of time passing. For example, one chapter sees Seifer running down a corridor, the hnext chapter sees Quistis filing a request for a trial revision, the next sees Seifer running down the same corridor and then Quistis had attacked her boss, driven his nose into the table and is busily making short work of a pot of caffine pills, whilst Seifer meanders down the same wretched corridor. I have no idea what I was doing, but I mean to address the matter, swiftly.

I sincerely apologise for the way I've abandonned this thing and I shal start work on righting my mistakes immediately, though I know not where to start...

-Okami


End file.
